Copying home dir to external ssd

[toke lahti]

Hi,
usual things here:
bought new mini, didn't pay outrageous price for internal ssd, have to place home dir to external drive.
Moving from mini2012(Sierra), which have 2.12TB fusion drive, which is half full.
What is the best way to do this?
Already tried with Migration assistant to move only my home dir's Library, which gets internal drive full, because I made a mistake and migrated apps first.
With new mini, I'm using temp-admin account to move home dir.
Moving home dir to external messed up permissions and account is not working right.
Noticed that external didn't have "ignore ownership" un-checked.

1.
If I copy home dir to external again with Finder, would the permissions stay right this time?

2.
Or should I use some other method?
Since the account has lots of appleID and other "net stuff", I thought that Migration assistant would be best.
Could the job get done just connecting the external drive to old mini and simply copying the home dir to it? If that's the case, how should I point the home dit to new mini's system?
Would the new account work with all appleID stuff?

3.
Could CCC 4.1 do the job right?

4.
Do I remember right that ditto keeps permissions intact, maybe with options...?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Or should I use some other method?"

Yes.
You should.

You have a new Mini which has a VERY fast internal SSD (even if it's a small one).
You want to boot and run your apps and a basic account from it.

The problem is not having the home folder on the Mini (even on a small hard drive)
The problem IS that you have "too much stuff" IN the home folder.

The "way around" this is to move SOME of the stuff that's in the home folder to an external drive. These would be things like
- Photos library
- iTunes music folder
- Movies
- Other things that are taking up space inside your home folder.

BUT... leave the basic home folder where it is (on the internal drive).

The "libraries" that photo, music and video apps use can be located anywhere (an external SSD would be ideal). All you need to do is to "re-direct" them to find these libraries and work from them.

For example, with Photos I believe you can hold down the option key when you launch Photos, and it will ask which library to use.

I see this as a much better method then trying to relocate the entire home folder.

 

[toke lahti]

"Or should I use some other method?"

Yes.
You should.

You have a new Mini which has a VERY fast internal SSD (even if it's a small one).
You want to boot and run your apps and a basic account from it.

The problem is not having the home folder on the Mini (even on a small hard drive)
The problem IS that you have "too much stuff" IN the home folder.

The "way around" this is to move SOME of the stuff that's in the home folder to an external drive. These would be things like
- Photos library
- iTunes music folder
- Movies
- Other things that are taking up space inside your home folder.

BUT... leave the basic home folder where it is (on the internal drive).

The "libraries" that photo, music and video apps use can be located anywhere (an external SSD would be ideal). All you need to do is to "re-direct" them to find these libraries and work from them.

For example, with Photos I believe you can hold down the option key when you launch Photos, and it will ask which library to use.

I see this as a much better method then trying to relocate the entire home folder.

Thanks for the "pure internet" answer (not answering, but telling how you feel)
Well,
Got 256GB internal and there's now:
/Apps 96GB
/Libr 75GB
and my home dir's Libr only is (strangely enough with APFS's "delta cloning") 29GB in internal (688 258 items) and when copied to external 55GB (1 144 933 items)!
Movies, music & photos will be on external hdd.

So,
I don't find any reason to fullfill the internal drive with my home dir, since most of it won't fit there anyway.
I'll leave that space to software's scratch disk, which will speed up video and photo editing.